What is going on with Square Enix and the 14 team?

[Skyborne]

Why would Yoshi-P even waste his time addressing the discourse surrounding the story and attempt to clarify by offering his and Ishikawa's interpretation of the story in a LL if it wasn't controversial? If it wasn't, he could've simply ignored it, but he didn't, so...

Indeed, he was just directing this from the Q&A session at four bad tawxic hayter irrelevant minority forum posters:

I think everyone has a lot of different feelings about Venat and we wanted to communicate to you that Hydaelyn is not evil. However this is the decision she has made and she decided to split the world into 14 parts so that humans can use Dynamis and kill Endsinger, and that decision really makes me think, “Yeah, Venat is definitely an Ancient, huh”.

(man, I had to really scroll up the leddit discord for this, and it made me realize how long they managed to stretch out all the 6.1 material that they had... phew)

[GomezAddams]

Honestly, the WoW comparisons are strange to me because...it can easily be inferred that after seeing the decline of WoW in real time many players moved over to FFXIV who are now seeing the exact same decline here as well.

WoW didn't collapse into controversy over the course of a single expansion. It was a slow, steady process that consisted of many different problems stacking up atop one another. Even then, many players rushed to stifle feedback and pretend everything was fine.

I was there, I saw it happen. From the drop of Cataclysm onward, the bottom line and attracting more subs were the only things anyone at Blizz cared about anymore. That was the first max exodus, and nobody noticed because of the HUGE influx of new players over the next two to three years. However, those new players unsubbed regularly, and only sometimes came back for patches, leading to even more casual-style, come-and-go business tactics. Now here we are on another game that's been struggling to provide what they promise and making retarded changes for no reason whatsoever for almost 3 years now. The only people on my friends list are hard core players and rich omni-crafters. They all stopped playing within 3 weeks of 6.0. We've now been given less and less content, and had jobs nerfed to the point of imbecility, both department of hand and land, as well as dept. of war. Facts are facts, and this is what stockholders want.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unless they put the brakes on this attitude by 6.2, the truth is that they will just continue to decimate the game in the name of dividends. And since SE will never sell the rights to this franchise to ANYONE, EVER, the game will just get trashed when stockholders no longer like the returns.

Yes, it's a vicious circle and makes no sense, but investors want money asap, and continuously. Yes, this outlook actually cuts them out of money in the long run. But as an investor, they want what's hot now, and the second something cools off, the majority of them jump ship and take their investments with them, leaving the company or project in shambles with no revenue to fix anything.

The comparison is almost identical in all respects. And since even the majority of people that usually stroke Yoshi's ego (and other stuff) are remaining surprisingly silent, I dare say even THEY are sick of the BS at this point. Yes fanbois and girls, we noticed your silence. I'm no prophet, but I understand business, and what's going on here is an all too familiar story in this day and age. Welcome to the end.

[IdowhatIwant]

I just keep thinking, there's no way this is an actual person behaving genuinely. Why would anyone be willing to be this embarrassing and self unaware on behalf of a corporation, on behalf of some game devs who won't even see this what with how heavily feedback gets ignored?

2022 we all sell out to something.

[Denji]

I was there, I saw it happen. From the drop of Cataclysm onward, the bottom line and attracting more subs were the only things anyone at Blizz cared about anymore. That was the first max exodus, and nobody noticed because of the HUGE influx of new players over the next two to three years. However, those new players unsubbed regularly, and only sometimes came back for patches, leading to even more casual-style, come-and-go business tactics. Now here we are on another game that's been struggling to provide what they promise and making retarded changes for no reason whatsoever for almost 3 years now. The only people on my friends list are hard core players and rich omni-crafters. They all stopped playing within 3 weeks of 6.0. We've now been given less and less content, and had jobs nerfed to the point of imbecility, both department of hand and land, as well as dept. of war. Facts are facts, and this is what stockholders want.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unless they put the brakes on this attitude by 6.2, the truth is that they will just continue to decimate the game in the name of dividends. And since SE will never sell the rights to this franchise to ANYONE, EVER, the game will just get trashed when stockholders no longer like the returns.

Yes, it's a vicious circle and makes no sense, but investors want money asap, and continuously. Yes, this outlook actually cuts them out of money in the long run. But as an investor, they want what's hot now, and the second something cools off, the majority of them jump ship and take their investments with them, leaving the company or project in shambles with no revenue to fix anything.

The comparison is almost identical in all respects. And since even the majority of people that usually stroke Yoshi's ego (and other stuff) are remaining surprisingly silent, I dare say even THEY are sick of the BS at this point. Yes fanbois and girls, we noticed your silence. I'm no prophet, but I understand business, and what's going on here is an all too familiar story in this day and age. Welcome to the end.

The square prez is already addicted to NFTs and the fact that babylon's fall is just "oops, all microtransactions" and also an abysmal failure (10 whole people playing it on steam alone...) should both be taken as very, very big warning signs.

[Rufalus]

My thing is being tired of the same cookie cutter content every year in the same order for the same rewards.

I think the roulette system even lowers the chance of new ideas happening because they want duties in the roulette to all be roughly the same difficulty and length so people aren't tempted to jump out from a less desirable outcome. It's like a McDonalds approach to content. Has to be uniform and predictable. Why as a creator would you want to keep doing things you've done before, other than it being easy.

I don't want any more of the same stuff plugged into those existing spaces at perfectly timed intervals. Here's your next trial which drops weapons and a reskin mount; here's your next dungeon which drops nothing special; here's your next alliance raid with 4 bosses which drop armor and then the boss tells you to leave the area and chill and come back here some time later because it's a 3-part series again so the story has awkward pauses written in.

Almost everything is a repeat every expansion. Here's some arbitrary folklore grind to unlock the endgame gathering nodes, then you want to combine those with materials bought from tomestones to craft the masterbook recipes. Just repeat all those same steps every year. You know for sure what it's going to be, and how often. Do it again this patch, but the item level has incremented slightly higher. The effort to keep up feels redundant by season 38.

Dozens of major patches across a decade still following the same model and alternating raid pattern that was there from the beginning of ARR. I want to log on to a new expansion and have to work out how to proceed because it has systems I've never seen before. How do I get these materials? How do I solve this puzzle? How do I increase my soul resonance device or whatever?

They do add new things each year but deliberately isolate them to side content bubbles so they don't interfere with the core. Once you've completed the little diversion it's always back to the regular scheduled program. Also the early months of an expansion don't have any of those experiments, they just double down on the story and standardised instanced fights with standardised rewards, so island sanctuary for example is absent for the first 8 months at least.

Please create something new to surprise the old players. The next expansion doesn't need exactly 2 cities and 6 field zones again at launch, followed by none in the patch series. Fates and side quests don't need to work just as they always have. Content doesn't need to be spaced out so precisely in chunks of roughly equal size. You could have variable production times to make specific things but fill the gaps with reward campaigns and make intelligent reuse of existing assets like a boss rush arena or zone defense.

[kpxmanifesto]

I was there, I saw it happen. From the drop of Cataclysm onward, the bottom line and attracting more subs were the only things anyone at Blizz cared about anymore. That was the first max exodus, and nobody noticed because of the HUGE influx of new players over the next two to three years. However, those new players unsubbed regularly, and only sometimes came back for patches, leading to even more casual-style, come-and-go business tactics. Now here we are on another game that's been struggling to provide what they promise and making retarded changes for no reason whatsoever for almost 3 years now. The only people on my friends list are hard core players and rich omni-crafters. They all stopped playing within 3 weeks of 6.0. We've now been given less and less content, and had jobs nerfed to the point of imbecility, both department of hand and land, as well as dept. of war. Facts are facts, and this is what stockholders want.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unless they put the brakes on this attitude by 6.2, the truth is that they will just continue to decimate the game in the name of dividends. And since SE will never sell the rights to this franchise to ANYONE, EVER, the game will just get trashed when stockholders no longer like the returns.

Yes, it's a vicious circle and makes no sense, but investors want money asap, and continuously. Yes, this outlook actually cuts them out of money in the long run. But as an investor, they want what's hot now, and the second something cools off, the majority of them jump ship and take their investments with them, leaving the company or project in shambles with no revenue to fix anything.

The comparison is almost identical in all respects. And since even the majority of people that usually stroke Yoshi's ego (and other stuff) are remaining surprisingly silent, I dare say even THEY are sick of the BS at this point. Yes fanbois and girls, we noticed your silence. I'm no prophet, but I understand business, and what's going on here is an all too familiar story in this day and age. Welcome to the end.

Yeah, this is a well written take on the nitty-gritty side of major corporations such as Blizz and SE. Sadly, many players, particularly the younger playerbase that can't yet fully grasp the operation of a major corporation and its shareholders, will have a hard time accepting that SE is starting to make the same mistakes that Blizz had made in the past.

[Kyrj]

Being a creator for FF14 must truly suck. Imagine coming in and being told to make hallway number 43 and two packs of mobs for that hallway and then copy paste that hallway for the rest of the dungeon. Or a raid where it's just a circle or square.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Being a creator for FF14 must truly suck. Imagine coming in and being told to make hallway number 43 and two packs of mobs for that hallway and then copy paste that hallway for the rest of the dungeon. Or a raid where it's just a circle or square.

I think this is kinda silly, unless you suggest the designers are literally told thats all they are allowed to do.
But, something I can appreciate with the Raids are they sometimes make sweet engagements. Feel free to Disagree, but the 1st Tier of Myths of the Realm was pretty great.

I especially love that every time I come here to the Forums I see Doom and Gloom about the Content. But then I actually play the game myself and its like, it keeps getti g better and they keep outdoing themselves.

But hey, this is subjective opinion.
My only issies are the Hrothgar Treatment.

[Vahlnir]

I was there, I saw it happen. From the drop of Cataclysm onward, the bottom line and attracting more subs were the only things anyone at Blizz cared about anymore. That was the first max exodus, and nobody noticed because of the HUGE influx of new players over the next two to three years. However, those new players unsubbed regularly, and only sometimes came back for patches, leading to even more casual-style, come-and-go business tactics. Now here we are on another game that's been struggling to provide what they promise and making retarded changes for no reason whatsoever for almost 3 years now. The only people on my friends list are hard core players and rich omni-crafters. They all stopped playing within 3 weeks of 6.0. We've now been given less and less content, and had jobs nerfed to the point of imbecility, both department of hand and land, as well as dept. of war. Facts are facts, and this is what stockholders want.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but unless they put the brakes on this attitude by 6.2, the truth is that they will just continue to decimate the game in the name of dividends. And since SE will never sell the rights to this franchise to ANYONE, EVER, the game will just get trashed when stockholders no longer like the returns.

Yes, it's a vicious circle and makes no sense, but investors want money asap, and continuously. Yes, this outlook actually cuts them out of money in the long run. But as an investor, they want what's hot now, and the second something cools off, the majority of them jump ship and take their investments with them, leaving the company or project in shambles with no revenue to fix anything.

The comparison is almost identical in all respects. And since even the majority of people that usually stroke Yoshi's ego (and other stuff) are remaining surprisingly silent, I dare say even THEY are sick of the BS at this point. Yes fanbois and girls, we noticed your silence. I'm no prophet, but I understand business, and what's going on here is an all too familiar story in this day and age. Welcome to the end.

Honestly, I've got nothing to add after this post. You've hit the nail right on the head. This is all that needs to be said. I'm done here.

[Jandor]

They do add new things each year but deliberately isolate them to side content bubbles so they don't interfere with the core. Once you've completed the little diversion it's always back to the regular scheduled program. Also the early months of an expansion don't have any of those experiments, they just double down on the story and standardised instanced fights with standardised rewards, so island sanctuary for example is absent for the first 8 months at least.

I don't mind the side content bubbles, but the delay on them is a real killer. They really need to start dropping some of that non-standard content into the X.1 patches.

Wasn't it 5.3 before the Shadowbringers relic finally started picking up some steam? With the new 4 month cycle, that'll be 12 months after launch if it takes that long to get going in Endwalker.